This is not a big deal. Not this time. This time, you're my best friend and you did a nice thing for me.
Clint had done and said everything right after - after. Natasha was the one who'd been left fumbling, for a chance, and right now that was all she could think of, in the wake of his 'I like you'. It was a good thing, really, or at least it would be in the long run, that Clint was clear on the distinction now, the difference between how he cared about her and how he had - and how she had, too, really, if she was being fair - thought he did for so long. She didn't think she could hurt him quite so carelessly anymore, but she'd taken that for granted, for a really long time.
Even when she'd forcibly pushed him away and rebuffed so many of the gestures he'd tried to make, she'd counted on that, she supposed, that it would just always be there in the background. One more way being pretty had done nothing but fuck her over, really. It muddled things that never would have been muddled, otherwise, made even people like Clint confuse attraction for something more, especially when he'd been in a caretaker role for so much of her life.
And here she was, still coming to him at a moment when she needed somebody to make something right.
"I'm okay without dessert," she assured him. "Really. You know I was never really much for a lot of that sweet stuff, anyway." It had made her sick on the train, once, when she was twelve. She'd gorged herself on it before she'd learned about restraint. "Dinner was really good, though."